Saved and Start: 2 Amazingly Simple Web Based Bookmarking Tools

03 May 2014

The web is an amazing place. I come across entertaining, ground-breaking, cute and frightening content all the time. But thanks to my plummeting concentration levels, recalling those awesome things, minutes, hours or days later is a difficult task. May be that’s why I’m a compulsive Pocketer. I send every interesting thing I find on the web to Pocket, and some I bookmark. But when you consider hundreds and thousands of links, this system just doesn’t work. So I needed a lightweight system that worked in Chrome andSafari and simpler to use than Kippt.

I found two alternatives. Let me tell you about them.

1. Saved.io

Saved.io (Saved from here on) is a simple browser based utility that doesn’t even need an extension to function. You’ll have to register for an account before starting. Saving with Saved is really simple.

To save a link, type saved.io/ in front of any URL in your browser’s address bar.

To save a link to a specific list, type (listname).saved.io/ in front of any URL.

That’s it. Enter the prefix, press enter and the bookmark will be saved. When you add a list name before a URL for the first time, a new list will be automatically created.

Saved is for people who like their tech to be really simple – for coders and engineers who prefer to enter textual commands over navigating 3 layers of GUI. But it can be useful for the rest of us as well. It takes some time getting used to but ultimately you end up saving a lot of time.

2. Start.io

Start is a bookmarking service and a browser startpage rolled into one. It is also immensely customizable so you can use it in any way you want.

First, sign up for an account at Start.io. Start is different from Saved, it uses a traditional bookmarklet instead of adding a prefix to the URL. Go to Start.io’s help page and drag the Save to start.io bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar.

Now, when you want to bookmark any page, just click on the button and a bookmark dialogue box, similar to that of Chrome, will show up with all the details filled in. Here you can assign a group where the bookmark should be saved or create a new group altogether.

You can access your saved bookmarks in Start by going to www.start.io/(yourusername) on any device you own. As it’s web based, it should work everywhere.

The Start Screen

This post is about simple bookmarking services and you can use Start for just that but if you go one step further by assigning Start.io as your startpage, every time you load up your browser, you will be reminded of all the links you’ve saved. It can be an article about something you wanted to learn but forgot about it or just a set of pages you want to open every morning. Start also offers you 9 different designs to choose from.

The default bookmarks bar, taking up just one line of space on screen cannot give you as much information as an entire window. If you are going to use Start, you might as well make it your bowser’s start screen by going into Preferences inside the tool menu in Chrome or any other browser.

We Are The Web Generation

Yes, our smartphones are filled with apps these days but ultimately they are just a gateway to the web, packaged inside a native app. When we use PCs, we use it to go online. We are the web generation, and these are the bookmarking tools made specifically for us.

Chrome sync and Firefox sync do a good job at syncing bookmarks between different devices but I don’t use the same browser on each device I own. On Windows, Chrome is the king, same on my Android devices. But when it comes to Macbook, Safari works better. And on iPad, iCab is ahead of all.

If you are in the same boat, using web based bookmarking tools will make you life a little bit easier. Try them.